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Friday, May 3, 2013

We talk a lot about speeding up the game, but we rarely hear any practical advice beyond just the words "speed up your play." In this little video from the golftipsmag.com site, PGA pro Jeff Ritter has a very simple tip to help you start the process by speeding up your putting.

You may be asking, "What's so great about this tip? What makes it different than just saying 'speed it up'?"

First of all, Ritter suggests speeding up a specific phase of the stroke -- namely, the time between when you get your practice putt the way you want it and when you hit the ball. It gives you a very specific part of the process to work on, and it's something that's fairly instinctive for most people. After all, you want to hit the ball while the correct stroke is fresh in your mind.

Second, I want you to note that Ritter isn't telling you to take 8 seconds. He's saying to take NO MORE than 8 seconds. There's some room for individuality here, and I think that makes it better advice. Instead of focusing on some technique or sequence of events, you're just trying to get your routine down to 8 seconds or under.

Finally, once you do this successfully -- and I believe this is simple enough that most of you can do it without a problem -- you've learned a simple technique for speeding up your play even further. After you get the actual stroke time down, you can apply the same idea to the time you take reading your putts. (Maybe not an 8 second limit, but maybe 15 or 20 seconds.) And you can use the same idea to help speed up your full swing routine -- first, speed up the time between practice swing and actual ball strike, then speed up the pre-shot routine.

It's little things like this that can really help you become a faster player without hurting your game. Using this technique will help you learn where you can speed up and where you can't. Just knowing that can help you eliminate the wasted time that actually hurts your game.

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About Me

Author of several golf books including Ruthless Putting and Stop Coming Over-the-Top, and editor of Classic Adventure Stories: Swashbucklers, a collection of classic sword-fighting novels. I've run the Ruthless Golf blog since mid-2009. And I've also done some writing for Golfsmith.com.

I'm a writer, cartoonist, graphic artist & self-publisher who's played in some local pro golf tournaments. The challenge of learning new things really appeals to me. And I don't believe age should ever keep you from chasing your dreams.

I also write children's easy reader books under the pen name Mick Michaels, and poetry under the pen name Will Shakespeare.